What Happened to the Thistle

Adjoining the rich estate was a lovely and beautifully kept garden
of rare trees and flowers. Guests at the estate enjoyed this fine garden and praised
it. People from the countryside all round about and townspeople as well would come every
Sunday and holiday to ask if they might see the garden. Even whole schools made excursions
to it.

Just outside the fence that separated the garden from a country
lane, there grew a very large thistle. It was so unusually big with such vigorous, full-foliaged
branches rising from the root that it well deserved to be called a thistle bush. No one
paid any attention to her except one old donkey that pulled the dairymaid's cart. He
would stretch his old neck toward the thistle and say, "You're a beauty. I'd like
to eat you!" But his tether was not long enough to let him reach the thistle and
eat her.

There was a big party at the manor house. Among the guests were
fine aristocratic relations from the capital - charming young girls, and among them was
a young lady who had come from a foreign land, all the way from Scotland. Her family
was old, and noble, and rich in lands and gold. She was a bride well worth winning, thought
more than one young man, and their mothers thought so too.

The young people amused themselves on the lawn, where they played
croquet. As they strolled about in the garden, each young lady plucked a flower and put
in a young man's buttonhole. The young lady from Scotland looked all around her for a
flower. But none of them suited her until she happened to look over the fence and saw
the big, flourishing thistle bush, full of deep purple, healthy-looking flowers. When
she saw them she smiled, and asked the young heir of the household to pick one of them
for her.

"That is Scotland's flower," she said. "It blooms
on my country's coat of arms. That's the flower for me."

He plucked the best flower of the thistle, and pricked his finger
in the process as much as if he had torn the blossom from the thorniest rose bush.

When she put it in his buttonhole, he considered it a great honor.
Every other young man would gladly have given his lovely garden flower for any blossom
from the slender fingers of the girl from Scotland. If the heir of the household felt
himself highly honored, how much more so the thistle! She felt as full as if the sunshine
and dew went through her.

"I must be more important than I thought," she said to
herself. "I really belong inside, not outside the fence. One gets misplaced in the
world, but I now have one of my offspring not only over the fence but actually in a buttonhole!"

To every one of her buds that bloomed, the thistle bush told what
had happened. Not many days went by before she heard important news. She heard it not
from passers-by, nor from the chirping of little birds, but from the air itself, which
collects sounds and carries them far and wide - from the shadiest walks of the garden
and from the furthest rooms of the manor, where doors stood ajar and windows were left
open. She heard that the young man who got the thistle flower from the slender fingers
of the girl from Scotland, now had won her heart and hand. They made a fine couple, and
it was a good match.

"I brought that about," the thistle believed, thinking
of how her flower had been chosen for the gentleman's buttonhole. Each new bud that opened
was told of this wonderful happening.

"Undoubtedly I shall now be transplanted into the garden," thought
the thistle. "Perhaps they will even pinch me into a flowerpot, which is the highest
honor of all." She thought about this so long that at length she said with full
and firm conviction, "I am to be planted in a flowerpot."

Every little thistle bud which opened was promised that it too would
be put in a pot, perhaps even in a buttonhole, which was the highest it could hope to
go. But not one of them reached a flowerpot, much less a buttonhole. They lived upon
light and air. By day they drank sunshine, by night they drank dew, and were visited
by bees and wasps who came in search of a dowry - the honey of the flower. And they took
away the honey, but left the flowers behind.

"Such a gang of robbers!" said the thistle bush. "I'd
like to stick a thorn through them, but I can't."

Her flowers faded and fell away, but new ones came in their place. "You
have come as if you were called for," the thistle bush told them. "I expect
to cross the fence any minute now."

A couple of innocent daisies and some tall, narrow-leaved canary
grass listened with deepest admiration, and believed everything that they heard. The
old donkey, who had to pull the milk cart, looked longingly at the blooming thistle bush
and reached out for it, but his tether was too short.

The thistle thought so hard and so long about the Scotch thistle,
whom she considered akin to her, that she began to believe that she herself had come
from Scotland and that it was her own ancestors who had grown on the Scottish arms. This
was toplofty thinking, but then tall thistles are apt to think tall thought.

"Sometimes one is of more illustrious ancestry than he ventures
to suppose," said a nettle which grew near-by. It had a notion that it could be
transformed into fine muslin if properly handled.

Summer went by, and fall went by, and the leaves fell from the trees.
The flowers were more colorful, but less fragrant. On the other side of the fence the
gardener's boy sang:

"Up the hill and down the hill,

That's the way the world goes still."

And the young fir trees in the woods began to look forward to Christmas,
though Christmas was a long time off.

"Here I still stay," said the thistle. "It is as
if nobody thinks of me any more, yet it was I who made the match. They were engaged,
and now they have been married. That was eight days ago. But I haven't progressed a single
step - how can I?"

Several weeks went by. The thistle had one last, lonely flower.
Large and full, it grew low, near the root. The cold wind blew over it, its color faded,
its splendor departed. Only the thistle-shaped cup remained, as large as an artichoke
blossom, and as silvery as a sunflower.

The young couple, who now were man and wife, came down the garden
walk along the fence. The bride looked over the fence, and said, "Why, there still
stands the big thistle, but it hasn't a flower left."

"Yes, there's the ghost of one - the very last one." Her
husband pointed to the silvery shell of the flower - a flower itself.

"Isn't it lovely!" she said. "We must have one just
like that carved around the frame of our picture."

Once again the young man had to climb the fence, and pluck the silvery
shell of the thistle flower. It pricked his fingers well, because he had called it a
ghost. Then it was brought into the garden, to the mansion, and to the parlor. There
hung a large painting - "The Newly Married Couple!" In the groom's buttonhole
a thistle was painted. They spoke of that thistle flower, and they spoke of this thistle
shell, this last silvered, shining flower of the thistle which they had brought in with
them, and which was to be copied in the carving of the frame. The air carried their words
about, far and wide.

"What strange things can happen to one," said the thistle. "My
oldest child was put in a buttonhole, and my youngest in a picture frame. I wonder where
I shall go."

The old donkey by the roadside looked long and lovingly at the thistle. "Come
to me, my sweet," he said. "I cannot come to you because my tether is not long
enough."

But the thistle did not answer. She grew more and more thoughtful,
and she thought on right up to Christmas time, when this flower came of all her thinking:

"When one's children are safe inside, a mother may be content
to stand outside the fence."

"That's a most honorable thought," said the sunbeam. "You
too shall also have a good place."